The Coda
by CSI Clue
Summary: Far in the future, no cake in the breakroom.


The Coda 

There were almost enough now. He'd lost weight, so he'd had to keep that in mind and it had taken a while to save up, but he was fairly sure his calculations were correct.

It was hard to tell sometimes. All the reliables were breaking down, one by one. The things he'd taken for granted for so long, disappearing year by year, month by month, day by day. The walking. The hearing. The autonomy of a life lived the way he'd always lived it, fading as his own body slowly let him down. He had pills for his heart now. And pills for his arthritis, pills for his migraines and prostate and kidneys. The little paper cups of them the orderly brought each morning seemed to overflow with brightly colored little bullets. He dutifully downed them with lukewarm orange juice under the watchful eye of the attendant, until it dawned on him one morning that it didn't have to be this way.

When he talked to Sara later, she'd pointed out that nobody had ever really succeeded in making him do anything he didn't choose to go along with. That took some of the pleasure out of his quiet conversation, even though she was right. Sara usually was. She'd smiled that wide knowing grin of hers and sent a shiver through his frame. Every time he looked at her he still saw the elegant girl/woman she'd always be.

So he'd taken quiet action, spurred on by Sara's sardonic grin. It wasn't hard. Shady Oaks was top-notch, but even they couldn't keep track of everything, and he was always one of the good ones, well-behaved and quiet. He did his crosswords in slow arthritic neatness, always finished his oatmeal, never complained about the channel in the Day Room. Just as he had all his eighty eight years, he blended in and didn't cause a stir, much to Sara's amusement.

He wondered how the rest of the world was doing. Not the larger, noisier world, but the smaller one of his acquaintances. Some answers he had, not that they were good. Brass lay under the turf in New Jersey, gone in a sudden shocking stray blast of machine gun fire during a hostage situation near MacCarran airport nearly thirty years ago.

That had been hard.

And four years after that, Nick, mangled beyond saving by a drunk driver barreling through a roadside crime scene. That had been the start of the loss of his own mobility, although his knees had been going anyway, long before the crunch of the bumper through his left one. Limping from scene to scene with a cane after that, always thinking of Nick and feeling the cold stab of dread whenever he heard a V8 engine revving up . . .

But there were some good things too. Lindsay and Catherine finally reconciling. Warrick writing the definitive collection of articles on trace collection and evidence processing; an achievement earning him an invitation to set up the syllabus at Quantico, and ultimately a permanent post there.

Some he'd lost track of—Mobley, the Curtis woman, even Ecklie had drifted from Las Vegas never to be heard from again. Robbins had retired and headed for warmer climes. David ran the morgue in his quiet dedicated way these days, his dark hair now silver.

He shifted miserably in his wheelchair, not wanting to think of the moment when David would be examining HIM, wishing he could say something before that painful hour. But there was nothing, really, he could do. He thought briefly of writing a note on his leg, imagining the coroner's sudden blink of emotion on seeing something addressed to himself . . .

"Doctor G?"

He looked up, confused, yanked out of his reverie by the soft southern drawl of Carolina, the head nurse. He liked her; she still treated him with some sense of respect, even when she'd re-dressed his boney old ass time after time when his pajama bottoms fell and he couldn't bend anymore to pull them up.

"Yes?"

"There's a young man to see you, sir. From the police."

He straightened up as best he could, feeling anxious. Did they know? Not that it would be a crime, after all they were his anyway . . .

Young was right, with the uneasy earnestness of youth in the face of mortality. Probably hadn't been on the job long, right out of whatever techno-training module had graduated him.

"Doctor Grissom, my name is Winston O'Hara, and I need to talk to you about some skulls."

He said nothing, letting his gaze take in the boy. Long, thin, same body type as Sanders. He shifted and looked up.

"What about them?"

"They're clean. And given how fresh they are, they shouldn't be."

And they were off and running.

ooo oooooo

It hadn't been hard, but the profound pleasure of knowing the answer and being able to roll it off his tongue was gratifying. Sara was proud. Brass and Nick were nodding their approval, standing shoulder to shoulder behind the O'Hara boy.

"Dermestid beetles. Someone's got a colony and is using it on your vics. That's why you don't have any staining on the skulls. They're decapitating the bodies, then letting the colony strip the skulls down. No blood stains, no boiling stains, just a straight natural digestion. Do any of your suspects work at a museum, or have access to one?"

The kid nodded, mind already racing and the sight of that did him good, it really did. Connections being made, clues and facts falling into place, God the remembered rush of the chase. He found himself almost smiling when the kid spoke up.

"Beetles . . . but I thought the process of decomp took longer, sir."

"In the wild, yes, where you have weather, location and a thousand other random factors. But a controlled colony created for the sole purpose of stripping down bones works a hell of a lot faster. A good sized one could strip an adolescent skull in twenty hours, maybe less."

"Shit. Oh! Sorry. But that fits the timeline . . . I have to go, Doctor Grissom, but thank you. Thanks a lot."

"You're welcome. Tell me . . ." he rasped, feeling a sneaking suspicion. "How did you figure to come to me?"

"My boss suggested it. Said you'd know when nobody else did."

"Ah. Well you tell Doctor Greggo Sanders I appreciate his recommendation. Always good to wrap things up. Tell him I'll see him after eleven."

Puzzled but polite, the young man nodded.

ooo ooo ooo

Those words came back to him a few days later, only after they'd analyzed the stomach contents, and Doc Phillips confirmed that the overdose consisted of between ten and twelve Darvocet.

End.


End file.
